What would a tumor feel like? Sadness? Despair? Hope? Surgeons will soon know, thanks to a device invented by Leeds University, England, which lets users judge the cancerous state of tumors, along with the best way to go about treatment.

"You move the device around and, just like your computer mouse, it moves around the virtual 3D surface," the Leeds University engineering student Earle Jamieson said to the BBC. Different amounts of pressure in the user's hand corresponds to how dense the tissue is, and while their supervisor Dr Rob Hewson admits that "there are a lot of technical challenges to overcome before this can be integrated into surgical devices," the surgeons who have sampled the technology already were reportedly in awe of the response, finding it "potentially very useful." [Leeds University via BBC and WIRED UK]